Rik George writes

Dictionary Flowers

My grandmother 
kept her family history 
in a dictionary, 
because Webster’s stirred less controversy 
than her mother’s Protestant Bible 
in her stepfather’s Catholic household. 
She pressed flowers between its pages, 
mementoes she kept of her wedding, 
and my father’s christening, 
and maybe her mother’s funeral. 
She never said which blossom 
marked which event, 
perhaps because she couldn’t remember. 
I don’t touch them. 
They might crumble. 
Even the dictionary’s pages 
are brittle and likely to shatter. 
I breathe gently when I look at them. 
I don’t want to sneeze 
and scatter her memories 
and the old definitions 
among the dust mites 
in this room she never saw.